Archives for August 2018

Oh I forgot, the worst news from yesterday. The lowest of the low, the most despicable, the most illegal, the most criminal thing that happened yesterday was the release of a candidate’s SF-86 form. This form is the form a person fills out when applying for a secret clearance. This information is very private and intrusive. It is never supposed to be released to the public. So what did the Trump Administration do? A right wing group filled a Freedom of Information Request to get Abigail Spanberger’s SF-86 form and they released the whole thing – unredacted. How did the Spanberger team find out? It turns out that Paul Ryan’s folks got the form and were shopping it around to see how much people would pay for this information.

So let’s be clear, an opposition Republican research firm obtained the highly classified information of a candidate. That’s against the law. They then spread that information around to and including Paul Ryan’s super pac, that too is against the law. Both groups are trying to say, “Hey we got it via a FOIA request. So it’s legal.” Except it’s not. It violates the Privacy Act. Then they say, “Oh well, not our fault. We’re going to use it.” That too is illegal. Some of their sycophantic followers are trying to say, “What does she have to hide? Must be bad.” Yeah, well, maybe nothing, maybe something but this includes her Social Security number and her complete medical history as well as any job she has had and any foreign national she has ever met. This oppo research group has used this information in despicable ways already, trying to link Spanberger to criminals based on a temporary job she had teaching in a school. OMG! By this logic Paul Ryan and Donald Trump have been connected to some of the worst people in the world because they were in the same room as international thugs, dictators, and terrorists. Unlike Spanberger who only taught at a place where others passed through and not necessarily at the time she was there.

Ted Cruz has gone after his challenger Beto O’Rourke for being in a rock band, while he Ted released a video showing that he can’t dribble or shoot a basketball. So the choice for Texas is this, “Rock God? or white kid that can’t dribble or shot?”

In late breaking news, Ron DeSantis who just won the nomination for Governor for the State of Florida just resigned as an administrator on a facebook page called “Tea Party.” It is not part of the national “Tea Party Patriots” facebook page. Oh no, this group says Charlottesville was a hoax orchestrated by the left; compared the Parkland survivors and the Black Lives Matter activists to Hitler; that the NFL players who kneel are “overpaid ball chasers who kneel like ISIS”; that Islam as a religion is “pedophillia, sex slavery, gang rape,..”

Other members of this facebook group are Corey Stewart, Republican nominee for Senator for Virginia; Kelli Ward, Republican from Arizona; and well known anti-Muslim agitator Pam Geller.

So Ron DeSantis is a racist, and was until a few days ago an admin on a racist facebook page that not only advocated racism, but hatred toward: women, Muslims, and people of color. Yeah, let’s elect him governor.

Yesterday, Donald Trump killed the pay raises for everyone in the Federal government.

Also, Kris Kobach is being sued for the names of all the hundreds of thousands of people he removed from the voting roles in Kansas and in the twenty one states that Kobach’s Operation Cross Check removed voters from the rolls.

According to the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation the median American household has $11,700 in savings. The top 1% has $1.1M. The bottom 20% have nothing.

Another Manafort associate pleads guilty. This guy bought tickets to the Trump inauguration for $50K for Ukrainian Russian folks.

Oh yeah, Michael Cohen and Trump tried to buy all the dirt the National Enquirer had that went back decades. There are rumors that Trump paid a woman for her abortion. Tell that to the Christian right!

1. Andrew Gillum’s big win in Florida? Democratic turn out was up 70%.

2. Gillum’s opponent who has done little campaigning but had over 130 appearances on Fox (worth $9.3M) has said “ we shouldn’t monkey around” … whatever?

3. Gillum’s buddy who says he’s not a racist?

4. The administration’s new policy to deny U.S. citizens passports because 50-60 years ago some midwives delivered babies that may have actually been born in Mexico but they put them down as being born here?

5. The NBC report that there’s a website that churns out stories about pedophiles and links them to various businesses like Voodoo Donuts, Thank-you Jesus Ice Cream, and yes Ping-Pong Pizza (famous for its running a child porn ring out of its basement when the building is on a slab of concrete and has no basement)?

6. The Republican Excel spreadsheet that Axios reports has listed numerous investigations that the Democrats could launch if they take over the House?

Let’s do numbers 1, 2, and 3 first. Gillum a black man won the Democratic nod in a four way race. Easily outdistancing the Dem Party pick. Why? He went all over the state. He spoke to people about health care and wages. About getting rid of I.C.E. about impeaching Trump. Democrats responded.

Gillum’s opponent went on Fox News over and over again. He didn’t campaign in the state. He didn’t talk about bread and butter issues. He’s called Gillum a socialist and said we can’t stop the progress Trump has made. He’s run adds showing him reading Trump nonsense to his little kids, and showing one of his kids building a wall out of cardboard blocks. Then he made the “We shouldn’t monkey around” comment. He says it’s not racist. He said he won’t apologize because he has nothing to apologize for. His buddy was on TV saying he knows the guy and he’s not racist.

I have news for the buddy and for DeSantis – HE’S A RACIST. DeSantist = Racist.

As far as the progress DeSantis claims, I ask, “What progress?” The economy is up and wages are down.

How is that helping the average person.

I say let’s stop this “progress” and help people obtain a living wage, decent education, and good health care.

(I know. Crazy left wing socialism. To which I say, “Stick it.”)

#4 – Yup, the administration has figured out a new way to screw with U.S. citizens. If you were born on the U.S. border near Mexico they won’t renew your passport. Why? Fifty – sixty years ago some midwives were found guilty of claiming some babies born in Mexico that they delivered were recorded as being born in the U.S. What to do? Why it’s simple. Deny everybody near the border a passport now. I don’t know why but it seems to me Stephen Miller’s odious breath is all over this one.

#5 Below is a link the the NBC news story about this group of former Breitbart folks who are spewing out garbage that I guess is too toxic even for Breitbart.

Did you know there are secret tunnels connecting elementary schools to business that run child sex and porn rings? Did you know that in some cases they use submarines to transport the kids to and from these places via the city water system?

And people like Ted Cruz, Devin Nunes, Steve Scalise and the Rep Nat Congressional Committee have fund raised with them. Nice.

#6 Axois got hold of an Excel spreadsheet listing many different investigations Democrats could begin if the Reps lose the House. I have cut and pasted the 18 the Axios article listed. Be aware, there are more.

It has churned Republican stomachs. Here are some of the probes it predicts:

President Trump’s tax returns

Trump family businesses — and whether they comply with the Constitution’s emoluments clause, including the Chinese trademark grant to the Trump Organization

Trump’s dealings with Russia, including the president’s preparation for his meeting with Vladimir Putin

The payment to Stephanie Clifford — a.k.a. Stormy Daniels

James Comey’s firing

Trump’s firing of U.S. attorneys

Trump’s proposed transgender ban for the military

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s business dealings

White House staff’s personal email use

Cabinet secretary travel, office expenses, and other misused perks

Discussion of classified information at Mar-a-Lago

Jared Kushner’s ethics law compliance

Dismissal of members of the EPA board of scientific counselors

The travel ban

Family separation policy

Hurricane response in Puerto Rico

Election security and hacking attempts

White House security clearances

The spreadsheet — which I’m told originated in a senior House Republican office — catalogs more than 100 formal requests from House Democrats this Congress, spanning nearly every committee.

The spreadsheet includes requests for administration officials to be grilled by committee staff, requests for hearings to obtain sworn testimony, efforts to seize communications about controversial policies and personnel decisions, and subpoena threats.

These demands would turn the Trump White House into a 24/7 legal defense operation.

And

#7 Donald Trump is mad at the media for being unfair to him.

#8 Don McGahn, White House Counsel, is leaving in September. McGahn one of the few competent people in the White House and with whom I have many differences is leaving. It was McGahn who pushed through so many right wing nominees for judgeships and has been working to jam Brett Kavanaugh down our throats.

Interestingly, there is a wealth of paperwork in the National Archives on Kavanaugh that is being blocked by Republicans from letting folks see it. Only 6% has been revealed. Has the 130 page dossier Kavanaugh wrote up for Ken Starr been released? The one that specifically wanted to know every detail of Bill Clinton’s sexual actions with Monica Lewinsky?

#9 It has been reported that Michael Cohen and Trump tried to buy decades of bad stories about Trump.

And we haven’t even touched on the Russian hacking.

Have a nice day.

990 Days to Go

PS Banana bread batter bundt(say 3 times quickly) – pan in the InstaPot before baking and before putting on aluminum foil.

Well, we are rapidly counting down to the mid-term elections. In Florida, a really neat soft spoken man won the Democratic primary for Governor, upsetting the party pick. He’s a Bernie guy. It will be interesting to see how he does against a Trump picked Republican. The Rep is already calling the Dem a left wing socialist and “we can’t stop the progress we’ve made” blah blah blah. To which I ask, “What progress?”

There’s a new book out called “Winners Take All” which talks about now “the global elite” try to solve the problems they created and in fact just preserve the status quo.

This in a nutshell is what Trump and his lackeys are doing. Progress? For whom? Not the regular folk (ie the 99%). Since Reagan wages have stagnated. Why? There’s been some global changes like automation, but the biggest factor in the U.S. has been the continued harassment of people trying to bargain collectively (ie unions).

Coffins

Trump and many Republicans in Congress and running for office are either not paying attention to the facts or they are envisioning “the good old days.” The problem with the former is it’ hard to solve problems when you don’t know what’s happening. The problem with the latter is that the mind forgets the bad and remembers the good stuff. People look at houses built a hundred years ago and remark, “they don’t build them like they use to.” That’s not entirely true. The crappy stuff fell apart. All you have left is the good stuff, that lasted.

Trump held a rally in West Virginia a week back (seems an eternity.) He said he was for coal and he’d bring jobs back, etc. He ignores the fact that automation will mean far fewer jobs than “the good old days.” The coal industry talks about “clean coal.” Let me tell you about clean coal. I worked at Western Electric, the supplier to Bell Telephone of most of their equipment. In the factory where I was a supervisor we made stuff that dated back to the 1920s. Much of it was based on two pieces of carbon set with a specific gap between them. The idea was that an excessive electric current could be bled off from a phone line that way. Where the carbon pieces were made was black with soot. The men working there had black soot in their pores. It was filthy. They got paid top dollar. More than almost anyone in the factory. The job didn’t seem all that hard. In fact, most of the time they sat around while the machines did the work.

I wondered why they got paid so much. I pulled the job description sheet. These sheets had scoring on the front for skill and difficulty. I looked at their sheet. It wasn’t scored high on difficulty. So why did they get such a high job grade? I turned the sheet over. On the back side were other factors. There it was: “Exposure can cause death.” That is clean coal innutshell. Maybe, you can put in better filters and scrubbers and wear masks etc. but the stuff is filthy and “can cause death.”

Could we figure out a way to do some of those things? Yeah. So why have the Republicans stood in the way and blocked each and every one of those things?

The current Republican Party acts more like a mafia family than a political party and it’s not me who says this. It’s former Republicans who are commentators.

Let’s look at a proposal in each of the three areas I’ve mentioned:

Health Care – Let The VA, Medicare, and big insurers negotiate directly with the drug companies to decrease the cost of drugs. This is currently not allowed by law. This is crazy. The savings would be 30-40% easy.

Better Working Conditions – Increase the minimum wage, peg the lowest paid person’s wage to the CEO’s wage in the company or industry. What would be reasonable? The CEO can’t make more the one hundred times the lowest paid person? 200?

Better Education – Get rid of the student debt restrictions. Currently students can’t renegotiate their debt. That’s crazy. Drop the costs of public college education. It could be done if we had politicians who cared.

Fair Share Taxation – If everyone paid their fair share we could do a lot. You know what this would mean? Yeah. The rich would have to pay. They aren’t now.

There are a number of much more specific and reasonable things in a bill that is in the Senate, but of course Mitch McConnell won’t do anything because it has Democrats signed on as well as Republicans, and he’s been so paid off by special interests that this bill would hurt that he won’t budge.

In other news, a thirty year old Russian who hacked Dropbox and Linkedin has been extradited to the U.S. for trial. I mean it was no big deal, right? 68 million accounts or more from Dropbox and 117 million from Linkedin. This was back in 2012 and has nothing to do with the current Russian hacking … Or does it? … Why have officials from the Russian government visited him on several occasions without his lawyer present? There are rumors that he knows something about Russian hacking of elections here. Nine counts – $1M in fines – 32 years in prison. He’ll be out in time to retire.

Meanwhile the woman who blew the whistle on Russian hacking back in 2017 gets five years in prison. The intelligence community memo this woman printed out and passed to the Intercept showed that the intelligence community knew the Russians were hacking our election system back in 2016. And she’s going to prison for trying to get the word out. What I could never figure our was why Michael Hayden, under oath, lied to Congress and he never got in trouble.

Michael Steele warned the FBI and other folks about the Russians and they did nothing. When he went to other sources to reveal what was going on the FBI cut him off.

Now we have another terrible situation: two actually. The FBI’s expert on Russia counterespionage has been fired. The FBI’s expert on the Russian mafia is now being grilled by Congress. Why? Oh he knew Michael Steele.

Meanwhile the House had had someone come talk to them about Hillary’s emails. Great. Any concern about Russia and hacking? Nope. What about passing that bill to have states keep paper ballots as backup to the electronic systems so audits can be performed? Stopped that sucker.

Yeah, that’s right. I saw a problem (wet spot in the family room directly under the toilet) and took action right away. Imagine if this were Congress? The ceiling would have caved in before they did anything and even then they’d be blaming each other. Egads. Remember when we were a country that saw problems and tried to solve them? That was so long ago.

Did you see the president’s reaction to being asked about John McCain? Actually it was three times. Three different times yesterday he was asked about McCain. He sat there not saying a word with his arms wrapped around himself like a petulant child. He had the White House flagged raised in direct contradiction to standard protocol. Finally, he had it lowered and issued a statement after one of the veterans groups with two million members suggested he do so.

Rachel last night said that this was so simple. All he had to do was do something decent and not make it about himself. He couldn’t do it. Not on either count.

This got me to thinking, “Can anyone think of anything this man has ever done that was decent?”

Or “Was not about himself?”

In other news:

A court has ordered North Carolina to redraw its district lines before the 2018 election. It may go to the Supreme Court where it will no doubt deadlock 4-4, and be handed back to the lower court. North Carolina’s Republicans in power have been ordered twice before to redraw and they’ve screwed around.

The Republican efforts at gerrymandering continue, but maybe there’s a hope that at least in North Carolina district lines will be redrawn to actually represent the people of the state.

Republicans, not satisfied with their efforts at voter suppression have come up with a new tactic, the ADA!. Yup, they are using the American Disability Act to close voting places that don’t have wheel chair access, but they are only doing it in poor Democratic places.

Paul Manafort, it has been reported, may have been seeking a plea deal with the Mueller team. It may not be all that it seems. Apparently, the prosecutorial team and the defense team for Manafort’s next trial had a meeting with the judge in that case. The same judge that ordered Manafort to jail for witness tampering. This was reported as seeking a plea deal, but others have said no, it’s standard procedure before a trial to meet to discuss how to proceed. What makes this trial unusual is that it is happening at all. Instead of having one trial Manafort wanted two. This was considered so nutso by the judge that he had the defense team to the bench before they started the first trial to ask if that was the way Paul wanted to go. The defense assured him that was the case. Now, Paul Manafort goes to his second trial as a convicted felon. This says nothing about the other ten charges from the first trial that the jury 11-1 reached a “No Consensus” on.On those eight charges I am now hearing Paul Manafort could face eighty years in jail.

This next trial has a lot more evidence, including emails in Russian. (You want Russia? I’ll give ya Russia.)

So it may not be the case that Paul Manafort was doing a plea deal but rather that his lawyers were just meeting with the judge and prosecutors to see how to proceed.

Meanwhile the New York State case against The Trump Foundation continues.

Also, cute Ivanka has closed down her jewelry line, but her old partner has been accused of money laundering, extortion, and stiffing creditors. Not all these things were done with Ivanka’s jewelry business, but some were.

Okay, got that? Well, it turns out one old partner, the one mentioned above named Lax, Lax and Ivanka closed the business, called – get this – Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry.

Lax got a $1.5M loan from a guy named Rosenfeld in the name of Ivanka’s Fine Jewelry. Actually, from his family’s non-profit, which it isn’t clear what that non-profit does. Nor is it clear why Ivanka’s Fine Jewelry needed the money. In 2012 the charity sued to get their money back.

Rosenfeld owned a home on Carlton Road in Monsey, New York, a suburb of NYC. That house burned down on December 31, 2017.

In 2014, the ownership of the house transferred from Rosenfeld to a “entity associated with Rosenfeld’s family” whatever that means.

In 2015, Rosenfeld and Lax’s wife signed a note for $1M from a guy named Goldenberg and Goldenberg’s wife. Then the Goldenbergs loaned $600K more to Lax. All this supposedly to help Lax set up a new company after Ivanka’s company had closed.

The Laxs didn’t make their loan payments to the Goldenbergs and they sued to get their money. Suddenly Rosenfeld said he was still owed his $1.5M and needed to be paid back first, thus blocking the Goldenbergs from getting their money. Remember Rosenberg is in on the new loans. This looked fishy to the Goldenburgs and they not only cried foul but fraud.

A judge ordered half of Lax’s current jewelry business, the one he had before Ivanka, and the one he merely renamed when Ivanka came on the scene, be auctioned off. It’s the half Lax’s wife owns.

Then this past December the house burned down and the authorities suspect arson.

So at best it’s Whitewater. At worst cute little Ivanka is involved with seedy type characters and she could be criminally liable. Oh no, say it isn’t true! I keep hoping she can revive her fine jewelry line long enough to make some really nice wrist restraints. There’s a name for that! Think. Oh yeah, handcuffs.

Order my handy guide from Amazon entitled “Would you like a job in the White House?”

Okay, I haven’t written it yet, but that’s all you need to do.

Create a title on Amazon that you think would appeal to Jared and you’ll get a call.

Trust me on this.

That’s how Peter Navarro got his job as “The Trade Guy” for Trump. He’s the one who has these economic ideas that trade wars are good, which is interesting because he started out as a progressive Democrat. He ran for public office many times and lost. The main reason, people who know him think that he lost is that he’s an asshole, and he doesn’t hide it very well. This therefore makes him more qualified to be a Republican.

Oh, sorry, I didn’t finish how he got the White House job on trade. It seems Jared was looking for someone to do trade, so he went to Amazon and looked up authors on China and trade. Navarro has written several books on the subject, so Jared hired him. The fact that his ideas are debunked by any credible economist of course has no bearing on the White House vetting. “Look – China! Trade! Tariff! Good!” Okay let’s hire the guy.

In 2016 68% of people didn’t like foreign trade deals, be they on the left or the right. Great. What did they prefer? Mumbles. That’s what. Trade is one of those topics where you can always find facts to back up your beliefs or to show the other person is an idiot.

Van Gogh’s Daises

John Oliver pointed this out in his last show. Trump was in South Carolina saying they were going to tax all those German cars that were flooding into the country, like BMW. He was no doubt unaware that just north of where he was speaking is the largest BMW factory in the world. i.e. Cars made in America. Trump put tariffs on steel and aluminum, thus allowing the steel industry and the aluminum industry to hire more people – like 23-28,000 more Great! The down side being that the tariffs cost the importation of such products to rise and therefore the people who make things out of steel and aluminum to charge more. So the people who make nails for instance are going to be laid off because they can’t compete. How many jobs are we talking in steel and aluminum related products? 437,000 jobs. So while Trump can crow about the 28,000 jobs he created he’s kind of quiet about the 437,000 jobs he’ll destroy.

And what about farming? Oh geez. He’s hard on immigrant labor, had tariff wars with Mexico and China over farm products thus the farmers in America have their stuff rotting in the fields but it’s okay because they got no where to sell it anyway.

Meanwhile, the translators in Afghanistan who fought along side American troops are being denied access to the U.S. This allows the Taliban more time to find them and hunt them downand kill them. Problem solved.

Meanwhile “Our Cartoon President” TV show has the quote I like best for the beginning of the week. Don Jr. saying, “If the Democrats take the House in the next election then all these felonies will be for nought.” Love it.

On to John McCain. He died this week. There’s a lot to like and not like about him. He was a patriot. He was always trying to make our country a better place. I didn’t always agree on his choices or his ideas, but I never doubted that he was trying to make the world a better place. Certainly he wasn’t the brightest or best organized, and his military career has a number of problems, but I never thought he wasn’t trying to do his best for this country. It’s sad to see what our political landscape has become.

Watch for my new book on Amazon, “How to Shutdown a Special Counsel Investigation.”

I’ll be expecting a call from the White House within days of my putting it on Amazon.